Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to underground mining devices and, in particular, to a new and useful shield-type stope support for use in underground mining.
Shield-type stope supports with lemniscate guide rods for use in underground mining, particularly in hard coal mining, are known in great numbers. In these shield-type stope supports, a breaking shield is articulated to the rest of the support over lemniscate guide rods. The lemniscate guide rods serve both to stabilize and guide the roof construction, and to ensure a possibly vertical adjustability of the roof construction in the range of the working face.
In the known shield-type stope supports with lemniscate guide rods, these are arranged stationary but pivotably in the range of the floor construction. For this reason, the adjustability of such a support is limited by the length of the lemniscate guide rods. In order to be able to use such stope supports for greater seam thicknesses too, lemniscate guide rods of two meter lengths and more have already been used. This results in a wider adjustment range of the respective support, but on the other hand, the breaking shield swings out by a considerable amount at the mine filling and during the adjustment, so that the respective support is blocked in its vertical adjustability by the mine filling at the working face.
But since one cannot always build new stope supports for varying seam thickensses, it has already been suggested, at least on paper, to change the stope supports to different thicknesses in reconstructions, that is, after the timbers and the stope supports have been removed. For example, it has already been suggested, the applicant is not absolutely sure whether this is the actually practiced state of the art, to secure in the floor construction boxes with which the lemniscate guide rods facing the floor construction can be coupled. Such reconstructions however, are not possible during normal operation since it causes stoppages and requires an extremely long time with the corresponding costs.